by Kate Flora
The life of a cop’s spouse. The phone rings. Your heart skips a beat. You wait for the news about when he or she will be home. The news is bad. You turn off burners. Put the food away. And dig into work.
I wasn’t digging into work yet. I was enjoying my perfect August afternoon. Blue sky. Gentle breezes. No work that couldn’t wait. I put Charity Kinsman out of my mind and was feeling totally relaxed.
My phone rang. I’d already spoken to the only person I wanted to talk to. I gave it a dirty look, then picked it up with two fingers, cautiously, the way you might pick up a suspicious thing stuck to a shoe.
Jonetta’s voice burst out of the phone. “That Shondra girl needs someone to whack her upside the head.”
“I can’t argue with that,” I agreed, “but were you able to set her straight?”
“Did my best. Did my best. But she doesn’t want to listen. I called her coach. I know her coach real well. I’ve sent her some players. She’s going to call your girl, see if that will do any good.”
Damn. I had hoped Jonetta could work her magic. “Well, if she won’t listen to her coach, the opportunity is wasted on her anyway.”
It made me sad to say it. Sondra Jones was a very talented girl. But she was not my problem. If all of the people I’d rescued over the years—the ones Suzanne calls my ‘waifs’—suddenly reappeared, my life would be too full and my head would explode. MOC needs a mother with a working head.
“Thank you for trying, Jonetta. When are you going to leave that miserable, hot city and visit us in Maine?”
“Didn’t know I was invited.”
Oh dear. Someone was in a bad mood. “When are you not invited?” I said. “We have a guestroom.”
“With walls and windows? A floor and a door?” she said skeptically. She knew we’d bought a place that needed work. “Does your house have working plumbing?”
“All of those things,” I said. “You’ll even have a bed.”
There was a long silence, like she was actually thinking it over, which would be a surprise since Jonetta is even more wedded to her work than I am. When she said, “Would tomorrow be too soon?” I almost fell off my chair.
“Tomorrow would be fine. It would be wonderful.”
“Great. E-mail me directions. I haven’t had a vacation in six years, and if I don’t come now, the school year will start and I’ll be up to my ears in these girls and their problems.”
I put the phone down gently, like a small, grumpy Jonetta might still be trapped inside it, and shook my head. She was orderly and overworked, and the lead-up to a new school year is always hectic. I couldn’t imagine how she would—or could—take some time off. Couldn’t imagine her being willing to. But she’d said she was coming. Having her here was fine with me, especially if Andre was swamped.
Lying back in the chair, I reviewed the state of my pantry. Jonetta is a generously-sized woman who loves to eat. I still had a few trays of Rosie’s food left. One day we’d have to go over to the coast for lobster, and my garden would give us salads. Broccoli. Beans. We needed a coffee cake or muffins. A steak for the grill. Red wine. And chocolate cake. There were no food delivery services operating this far from the city. I would have to go to the store. A big store, not my local market.
My watch said it was only six-thirty. I had time for a provisions run now that what counted as rush hour outside Portland died down. Or I could go in the morning. My tired feet said, “Tomorrow.” My husband wasn’t coming home anytime soon. My default mode was work.
I went to my desk, sent Jonetta directions, and pulled out my work. The phone rang. I have such a love/hate relationship with phones. They’re essential for my work. The rest of the time, all the calls seem to be from the IRS or Social Security, computer scammers or bogus credit card companies. I think it should be a national priority to get rid of spam and free us from these constant intrusions, but our government doesn’t seem to have any priorities. Maybe if a few spammers are captured and put into stocks in the public square? Personally, there are days when I’d vote for beheading, so it’s probably good we don’t do that here.
It was the time when schools geared up for fall, and I am a slave of duty, though, so I answered. Shondra Jones’s anger and paranoia burst into my ear, a loud mélange of why didn’t I stay out of her life, and what did I know about basketball and scholarships anyway?
All I’d said was “Hello,” and all I’d done was try to help her. If she wanted to wreck her life, that was up to her. When she paused in her rant, I said, “That’s enough, Shondra. More than enough. If all you can do to the people who try to help you is abuse them, when instead of saying ‘thank you’ you curse and yell, you don’t deserve my help or anyone else’s. Just get this one thing straight—if you pass up this chance to go to college and play basketball, which you know you love—you aren’t likely to get a second chance. Blow it off, screw it up, insult and alienate all the people who care and are trying to help, and we won’t be here when you realize you’ve made a big mistake.”
She started up again and I cut her off. “I don’t want to hear it, okay? It’s a great school and a great team. You’re damned lucky, and you should be grateful. If you have genuine concerns, talk to your coach. And get your head straight. Or don’t. The choice, and the responsibility, are yours. Jameson has tried to help you. I’ve tried to help you. Jonetta Williamson, the best person you could have in your corner, was willing to help you. You aren’t going to find a better team to have in your corner. No buts. No maybes. No whatever else you’ve got to complain about. You blow off the school and the coach, word will get around, and you won’t get a second chance. Okay?”
She started in again and I hung up. Life had given Shondra plenty of reasons to feel aggrieved. She still had to take responsibility for her life choices. We all have to grow up sometime.
Darn it, I thought, as I settled back in my chair, I was supposed to stay calm. Avoid stress. Keep my blood pressure low. I’d already had a tense time with Jeannine. Arguing on the phone with an obstinate girl who risked wrecking her future chances wasn’t good for me. I needed peace and calm.
Someone knocked on the door.
A cautious little voice in my head said, “Don’t answer it.”
Another knock, more vigorous this time. Whoever was there was persistent. From my office door, I looked to see if there was a vehicle in the driveway. Maybe another of those damned black SUVs. There was no vehicle. Maybe Albie had biked over to get our returnable bottles and cans. The kid was a real go-getter.
Before I could decide what to do, the kitchen door opened and a man walked in. Well, more staggered than walked. I’d forgotten to lock it when I came in from the deck.
As I stood in the doorway, stunned, a battered and bleeding Malcolm Kinsman collapsed onto one of my kitchen chairs. Blood from a cut above his eye had slicked his face a gory red. He looked like something from a horror movie.
“I need your help. Please,” he gasped.
“You need an ambulance. A hospital. A doctor,” I said. “I’ll call…”
“No!” He was struggling to hold it together. “No ambulance. No one can know I’m here. It’s too dangerous.”
I handed him a clean kitchen towel, and he started mopping the blood from his face.
“You need a doctor,” I repeated.
“You’ve got to help me find Charity before they do,” he said, ignoring what I’d said.
Of course I still had no idea who “they” were. But before I probed for answers, if he was at risk I had to get him out of my kitchen, where people could easily see in, to a place where I could pull the blinds—the couch in my office—and see how badly injured he was.
I am no Thea Nightingale. I don’t like blood and I don’t have much in the way of first aid skills. He needed professional help. I knew if I insisted, rather than risking harm to his sister, he would stagger out of here and hide himself somewhere. No use to yell at him that his methods were ridiculous. If my guesses were right,
this guy could slither through villages in Afghanistan and probably spoke Arabic. If the bad guys could get to him, he was facing some seriously dangerous opponents.
I wasn’t liking Charity’s chances.
“Come with me, away from the windows,” I said. I got him to his feet, tucked my arm under his arm, and half led, half carried him to my office. I settled him on the couch and asked what I could do to help.
He muttered, “Find Charity before they do.”
“Who are they?” I think I yelled it. I was so frustrated by all these strangers and the information void.
He said, “Cartel,” like I was dumb for not knowing, and faded. Unconscious or asleep, I didn’t know.
WTF? Cartels operating in our small Maine town? This was way beyond my job description.
I pulled the shades and went to look for first aid supplies. I found some butterfly bandaids and used them to stick the cut on his forehead together. Best I could do. I wasn’t going to try and sew him back together. I covered him with a blanket, and went to call my husband. However busy he was, he was needed at home.
Twenty-Two
Despite our understanding that he would always answer except in a dire emergency, I went to voicemail. I wasn’t sure what message I should leave—that Malcolm Kinsman was lying unconscious in our house? Or just the more cryptic he needed to come home? But that would bring him racing to take me to the hospital, and I didn’t want him racing anywhere. Andre is a cool and collected character, except about MOC. I just said that Charity’s brother had shown up unexpectedly, he was injured, and I needed Andre’s help.
While I waited for him to call me back, I got a washcloth and warm water and cleaned Kinsman’s face and hands. With the blood gone, I could see how pale he was. “You’d better not die on me,” I told him, like that would do any good. I sat down in my desk chair to watch him.
Watching the facial tics of an unconscious, injured man is excruciating. It seemed so wrong not to call for help, to let him suffer, perhaps risk his life. I had no way of telling if someone finding him could actually be a threat to Charity, but being found was clearly a threat to him. When I’d last seen him, on the plane, he hadn’t known where she was. Since then, had she gotten in touch? And how, in the few hours since he’d been going around town asking about me, had he run into the people who’d done this to him? Where were they now? Where was his car?
A chill ran down my spine. What if they’d followed him here? Or been following him earlier today and then spoken to the same people I’d spoken with? What if, in a semi-conscious and injured state, he’d led whoever had bad intentions regarding Charity right to my door?
“Damn you, Malcolm. Why did you come here? Have you put us both at risk?” I said to his unconscious body. “And why does everyone think I know where Charity is?” I liked her. We’d had so much fun together. But I had no idea where she would have gone or even if she was still in Maine. My only comfort was that she’d appeared to be very competent and able to take care of herself.
Then again, so was I, and yet I wouldn’t want this baby to arrive in a strange place without help. Could I hope that she’d gone home? Back to where there were people who could care for her? Or, given that it appeared people with bad intentions were looking for her, would that be too dangerous?
The kitchen door. I still hadn’t locked it. I went out to take care of that, knowing that Andre was going to ask why I’d locked it after Kinsman was inside. There was some expression about locking the barn door, wasn’t there?
Andre didn’t call me back, which could only mean he was deep into something that couldn’t be interrupted.
Kinsman didn’t wake up.
It began to get dark. I left Kinsman—I wasn’t doing him any good anyway—and walked around the house, pulling shades where there were shades to be pulled, and turning on the lights. My house looked so pleasant in the soft light. The first thing a person would notice was not the splotches of repaired plaster on the walls or which of the floors still needed refinishing or that many of the windows needed replacing so they didn’t rattle or leak cold air when winter came. It looked cozy and welcoming, and still I felt awfully alone. No neighbors on the left—that was an open field—and the neighbors on the right spent the summer out at their camp on the lake, only coming back to check on the house and do laundry. That wouldn’t be until Monday.
From the upstairs hall, I looked across the street to Charity’s cottage, unlit and still behind the dark hedge. The next house down from the cottage had lights on, and I felt foolishly grateful to see signs of other humans.
MOC was tuning up to begin the evening acrobatics. They always began with little stirrings, as though my baby had to stretch its tiny limbs before it could start the workout to strengthen itself for its eventual appearance in the world.
I never watched TV, so that couldn’t distract me. Besides, it seemed like every time I turned it on, it was either bad news or right in the middle of a sensationalized true crime program. My own life had had enough true crime. I didn’t need to invite more into my life as entertainment. I felt like I had two choices. I could work, or I could sit and watch Malcolm Kinsman to see if he was still breathing.
As I gathered up my work to move it to the kitchen, I checked him. Still alive, his breathing now deep and steady like he was asleep. I left him to it, avoiding doing one of those annoying hospital things where they constantly disturb healing rest to record vital stats proving that the patient is still alive.
He was lying half on his side, and something was sticking out of his pocket. His wallet. Yup. Of course I snagged it and took it into the kitchen with me.
I was not surprised to learn that he was, indeed, Malcolm Kinsman, nor that he was active military. Nothing there told me why he was here in Maine or whether he was acting on his own, which his ability to find me on a plane suggested was not the case. I did find the photo of him and Charity’s husband. I got my magnifying glass and studied it to see if it would tell me anything useful.
All a mystery to me, but after an internet search, it looked like special forces badges on their fatigues. Or whatever their camo outfits were called.
Without any actual information, I began to develop a theory. It was that a foreign operation had gone wrong and someone, somewhere, presumably not someone friendly to the United States, was holding David Peckham hostage and wanted to find, and abduct, his pregnant wife, Charity, to use her as leverage to learn whatever confidential information he had about the operation. His buddy, Malcolm, had not been captured or had escaped and was here trying to find his sister and protect her. Malcolm had said cartel, so did that mean David Peckham was somewhere in South or Central America? Mexico? Did we even conduct operations in Mexico? No way I would know.
Who hired the private detective? The cartel? And why was he killed? Who was the guy in the cowboy boots? How was the Marshals Service involved, and why would someone looking for Charity have killed both Jessica Whitlow and Nathaniel Davenport if they were working for opposite sides? Was there some third party involved?
If I were to tell this story to someone, based on my woeful lack of facts, they’d say I’ve been watching too much television. But I don’t watch television. Nor am I a cop, though I’ve been accused of being one, and I’m not a detective, though I’ve been accused of that, too. What I am is a woman who’s been thrown into many situations where people are lying, where someone has malignant intent or doesn’t mind killing to protect themselves, and where finding the answers involves sorting out lies, getting enough information to build the right picture, and understanding people’s motives.
Here, aside from my whacko theory, I had nothing. Well, I had a special forces guy named Malcolm Kinsman in the next room. Bad guys were presumably after him. And I was alone in a charming but isolated house.
I got the key from a package of frozen peas, went upstairs to the gun safe in our closet, unlocked it, and took out my adorable Barbie special handgun. A gift from my loving and protecti
ve husband who also took me to the range and made me learn to shoot it.
Actually, this was not the gun I’d learned to shoot with. That gun had been taken by the police after I shot someone with it. A most righteous shooting, necessary to save my husband’s life. I’d never asked for it back, though. I’d never wanted to see it again. The only thing connected with that night that I wanted in my life was my husband. Andre had gotten me this gun instead.
I loaded it, relocked the cabinet, and went back to the kitchen, returning the key to the package of peas.
Andre says when he searches a house, he always looks in the freezer, but we still do this. There’s another key upstairs, just in case. Just in case bad guys bent on stealing our guns also think to look in the freezer.
I shrugged, even though there was no one around to observe my gesture. Then I sat at the counter and made a list for my grocery run, a chore that would complicate my day tomorrow. I would have to get up very early to get to the store, get back and put the food away, then spend some time at work before I had to be back here for Jonetta’s arrival.
Thinking about work nudged me to do some now, starting with a review of Eastern Shore’s honor code. At this point, dealing with a world awash in cheating and campuses living in fear of a shooting or other threatening event, honor codes, and crisis management plans have become our bread and butter. Not the kind of bread or butter I’d ever wanted to have in my life. Bread and butter sounds so benign, and this was anything but. At least I wasn’t living on some campus where I had to conduct active shooter drills or deal with the news that someone on campus had a gun. Ironically, I’d learned that there was an active-shooter simulation video schools can access called EDGE.
Sigh.
If I’d ever entertained the idea of becoming a head of school or working in private school administration, this job had dissuaded me. A significant proportion of the student body was on medication for something. Helicopter parents were morphing into snowplow parents, unless it was lawnmower parents or bulldozer parents. Maybe I should be grateful that my parents hadn’t hovered. My mother had been judgmental, and my father had hidden himself in work to avoid crossing her. My brother Michael had been Mom’s favorite and my sister Carrie had had a gift for rubbing Mom the wrong way, forcing me to act as the family peacemaker. I was eight when Carrie was adopted, and I’d practically raised her myself.